Be interesting to hear from people on here who might have been displaced by the problems there. Wouldn't expect this out of the newest, fanciest dorm (and one of the newest buidlings) on campus. I imagine I would be kind of pissed. Especially in this age of electronics.

I'm normally all about historic preservation, but the three days a week I spent in the Frieze during the last few years it was around convinced me there was no building I wanted reduced to rubble more than that shithole. Windows painted shut under about 15 layers of paint, weird half-stairways connecting ill-fitting additions (it was three buildings in one), lumpy floors, rows of tiny lockers...

My recollection of the Frieze was that it had one of the weirdest heating and cooling systems ever. One room would be about 80 degrees in winter and the next-door room 60. The following day, it would be reversed.

I'm pretty certain the second layer of hell was the basement on the MLB side of the building. No windows, always like a thousand degrees, and seemingly the only place on campus my discussion sections were allowed to be scheduled. At 8:30AM.

Some kid took a dump in the stairwell of Mary Markley in 1992 and wiped it all over the wall...disgusting. Ruined my Sunday morning brunch. I remember opening the door and smelling something akin to death, as I walked downstairs it got worse and worse. Then I saw the horrible crime scene. I reacted thusly:

That looks like the water cascading down the stairwell after an early 80"s water fight in West Quad. The football players broke out the fire hoses. As remember we got fined for that. Thankfully we were not on the ground floor.

When North Quad was being built, the company contracted to do the metal inspection messed up big time and had a shitty, just awful, shitty, (one more time? shittyyyyy) inspector sent to the North quad job site.. My girlfriend, who works in the construction industry, was told to not be surprised if there were any problems with the piping..... Now this.

TLDR; I'm not surprised a metal pipe broke. The guy doing the inspecting should have been fired five times over already.

A floor in south quad also flooded, though this was a more minor issue (sprinklers went off). Fun story behind it (and this is 100% confirmed, not a rumor), it was caused by a kid who got high and was shooting nerf darts around his room. He aimed for the sprinkler head, took a shot, and hit it dead on in such that it not only set it off but flooded all of 3rd Taylor. The whole floor had to be temporarily evacuated, and slept in other buildings for the next couple of days.

The bottom floors of South Quad completely flooded my freshman or sophomore year right at the beginning of finals week. The students living down there had to be moved to a hotel and lost a lot of their study materials. One kid also got zapped pretty good. I was thankful to live on the 7th floor.

You could imagine someone going on a rant about how the contracting of this work to private sector contractors, rather than being carried out by the university itself, encourages cost cutting and shoddy construction.

The truth is, we don't know why this pipe broke. To ascribe it to unions or penny pinching contractors or to university oversight or to the poor quality of metallurgy in a globalized economy, is to impose a political overlay on something none of us know the slightest bit about and serves no purpose other than to annoy other posters who might hold the opposite opinion.

Thus is the rationale for "no politics." Now, if you know something about this particular pipe, and why it broke, then, go for it.

Saw this on Reddit last night, had no idea it was North Quad. All it said was "So, my dorm flooded big time" and linked the images. Crazy. Part of West Quad flooded my sophomore year after people playing soccer in the hallway kicked the ball off the fire suppression sprinklers, it was wet but not anything like this.

As an aside, did anyone have renter's insurance while living in the dorms? I certainly didn't. I don't even know if my parents' homeowners insurance would've covered damages. Thankfully I purchased renter's insurance when I moved off campus.

It would be pretty lousy if the students who lost valuables are screwed if they didn't have renter's insurance. This is a university dormitory, not a for-profit apartment complex. The university should offer reimbursement for damaged property here. This is a man-made problem, not a natural disaster - and in a brand-new building, no less.